Quick and easy weeknight dinner that my kids won’t complain about. Spaghetti has always been easy, but this makes it way easier– one pot, dump and go, then eat!

This is a Instant Pot spaghetti and meat sauce recipe without using a pre-made jar sauce. I’ve been making this sauce for years and was worried it wouldn’t come out quite right this way because of the short cooking time, but it’s absolutely delicious and I’ll be making it this way from now on.

Start by chopping a white onion and mincing some fresh garlic. This is half of a very large white onion at about a cup.

While you can use that minced garlic that comes in a jar, fresh garlic is much more flavorful and, as Anthony Bourdain has said, if you can’t be bothered to chop garlic you probably shouldn’t be eating it.

Yes, that’s 7 cloves of garlic I’m using! It turns out to be about 4 tablespoons. I absolutely love garlic. I don’t think anything can be too garlicky. This doesn’t actually come out too strong in garlic flavor but it does come through. If you for some sad reason do not like garlic as much as me, you can half the amount.

Set your Instant Pot to sauté mode. If yours allows for different sauté temperatures, choose medium-high. Once heated, add 2 tbsp olive oil and onion. Allow the onions to cook for a few minutes until they start becoming translucent. Add garlic and stir for another minute or two.

Add ground beef (or substitute ground pork or Italian sausage) and cook until mostly browned. It’s best to use a lean ground beef here so that there isn’t much grease to be removed. Once ground beef is browned, hit “Cancel” on your Instant Pot.

Finally we’re here at the dump and go part. Add a 14.5 oz can of tomato sauce, stewed tomatoes and diced tomatoes. Add 2 bay leaf, 2 tsp dried basil, 2 tsp dried oregano, 1 tsp red pepper flakes, 1 tsp fennel seed, 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp pepper.

Next the noodles. This is a 16 oz package of noodles. Break them in half and add to the pot.

Submerge them into the sauce and try to arrange them in a way so that they aren’t too parallel to one another to reduce sticking together.

Place lid onto your Instant Pot, set it to sealing and set on Manual or high pressure for 5 minutes. If you prefer a mushier noodle, 6 minutes will work better. Keep in mind, though, this varies a lot on your noodle type and brand. The cooking time for my noodles on the package was 11 minutes, for example, and you’re going to want to half that time.

After the 5-6 minutes are up, allow the Instant Pot to naturally release for another 5 minutes. Do a quick release after 5 minutes. Careful! There might be some splatter. I like to put a towel over the valve just in case.

Take off the lid when it’s done depressurizing and give it a good stir. If some noodles did stick together, just separate them with a fork.

That’s it, time to eat! Garnish with parsley and parmesan cheese, if you’d like. Sadly I was out of parsley today.